In recent years, many e-commerce websites and content distribution websites (websites distributing contents, such as news articles, videos and games) provide recommendation function. The recommendation function is a function of extracting information regarding a user's interest and preference from the user's purchase history, browsing history, viewing history, or the like, so as to recommend items and contents that the user is likely to be interested in. In order to realize such a user-adaptive service, many websites identify individuals through user log-in authentication or by using the cookie function of web browsers.
While the recommendation function has become common with many web-based services, the recommendation function is not yet common with program browsing and video browsing (including video browsing on a television via the Internet, e.g., video browsing on demand) on a television receiver (hereinafter, “television”). Reasons for this include: one television being shared by more than one person to watch in many houses; it being difficult to perform a log-in operation, common to a web-based service, using a television remote controller with limited buttons.
With a television viewed by more than one person, it is not possible to know, only by analyzing its viewing history, how many people there are in the family, what the constituents of the family are like, and who watches what kind of programs and videos. This means that a user profile regarding individual interest and preference cannot be generated, which is a big problem for systems that provide recommendation functions.
It is possible to identify individuals with a personal authentication device attached on a television. For example, it may be fingerprint authentication, facial recognition, voice recognition, etc. However, this increases the manufacturing cost of remote controllers or televisions themselves. It may be possible to provide buttons for personal identification on a remote controller, but with televisions which are viewed passively in a living room, it will be a burden on a user to operate such buttons before viewing.
Under such circumstances, a content selecting viewing apparatus is known, which presents candidates of living hours adaptive content, which are adapted to viewers' living hours, based on the viewing history of the viewers viewing contents, so that a user selects and views the candidates of living hours adaptive content (see Patent Document 1). The invention disclosed in Patent Document 1 includes a receiving section, a content meta data group storing section, a viewing history recording section, a user preference data generating section, a user preference data recording section, an input section, a search filtering section, an input-switching output section, and an MPEG decoder section.
A program information providing apparatus is also known, which predicts, for each day of the week, viewable time slots in which a user can view television programs (see Patent Document 2). With the invention disclosed in Patent Document 2, the program information providing apparatus first analyzes user preferences. Then, the program information providing apparatus predicts viewable time slots in which a user can view television programs for each day of the week. Then, for each day of the week, the program information providing apparatus selects television programs that the user can view in the viewable time slots and that suit the user's preferences, based on information on the analyzed preferences, information on the predicted viewable time slots, and program information on television programs to be broadcast. Then, a user terminal device transmits information regarding television programs that suit the user's preferences to the user terminal device. Then, the user terminal device displays, on a television receiver, program guide information transmitted thereto. Thus, it is possible to provide the user with information of television programs that are viewable.
However, further improvements are needed for Patent Documents 1 and 2 described above.